2/7/10 140 characters that will increase your eBay profits

Hello!

I have been tweeting this week! I love Twitter for its simplicity and its total efficiency of getting my message out there to the world as quickly as possible. It’s by far my most favourite of all the social networking sites.  

So, unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears for the past few years you will be more than aware that social networking sites have become the place to be seen. In fact, they are such a phenomenon that they are now accessed by millions of people of all ages from all over the world every single day.  

If you are new to social networking sites, then first off, you should know that they are completely free to use and can be really great fun (and unfortunately quite addictive) as I discovered when I first opened my own accounts. Initially I started using sites like Facebook because my friends all had profiles and it seemed a sociable thing to do, but I gradually realised that social networking sites are in fact extremely powerful marketing tools and it got me thinking about how I could utilise them to my advantage for business rather than social purposes. 

Could it be possible to use social networking sites to actually market my eBay business rather than simply using the sites on a personal basis for keeping in touch with my friends and family? I decided to try this out and I discovered that it is entirely possible – and what’s more it works! I believe that if you are not currently using sites like these to market your eBay products, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity to drive traffic to your listings, promote page views and ultimately increase your sales. 

To be honest, using social networking sites to promote your eBay listings is a pretty big subject and so for the purpose of today’s newsletter I’m going to concentrate only on the Twitter site (and also because it’s my favourite!), but my home study course The Ultimate eBay Success System deals with this subject in much more depth if you would like to study this further.  

Twitter will help increase your eBay profits 

The reason that Twitter and eBay work so well together is that each tweet you submit is like a complete web page! Just like blog updates, search engines such as Google and Yahoo will look for relevant keywords as people search for the things they want on the web. So Google will find your tweets just like any other information online and if they contain relevant information your tweets will appear in normal searches. Every time you tweet, it will be found by Google, just like a normal web-page or blog would be. 

But the real key to using Twitter to increase your eBay sales is to send out tweets on a daily basis which include your eBay listing title and a link to your actual item. Alternatively you can simply tweet updates about your eBay shop, brand or products. But, it’s vital that you don’t just jump in straight away and start posting 100 tweets a day all with links to your eBay items as this will do you more harm than good. You will need to be a bit more subtle than that! 

How it works 

Twitter works with ‘followers’ and ‘following’. So, if you build up a lot of followers then many of those followers will be interested in whatever product it is that you are selling on eBay. To market really successfully on Twitter it’s absolutely vital that you build up your followers and to do this you should post interesting ‘tweets’ with a little about yourself and what you do. I am very careful to balance my social tweets with my marketing tweets so that my followers remain interested and keep following me. It also makes me ‘human’ and gives them an insight in to my life. What this does is establish you not only as an interesting person but also an expert on your product or in your niche – then you can gradually introduce tweets about your niche and finally tweets that link to your eBay listings. You’ll find that your followers will be interested and will click your links and view your products.

By adding tweets of up to 140 characters that are interesting and relevant about your services or product, you are keeping your tweets current which is what your followers will want. But you must mix your marketing tweets with tweets about yourself and your interests to avoid constantly spamming your followers with product information. Get a good balance between the two and you will find that your followers will stay with you for the long term.

This works especially well if you are selling within a niche that is not too generalised. For example, if you sell collectible items you will probably build up a lot of followers quite quickly who are all collectors themselves and who will be interested in what you are tweeting about and the items you can offer. You can also search for people who are in your specific target demographic and start following them – this way it’s likely that they will follow you back. Just go to www.twitter.com and search by typing in keywords that relate to the demographic that you are targeting. It's very easy to follow people and if your posts are interesting and relevant, and they start following you, you will keep a good number this way.

Once you have established your Twitter identity, you can start to run further searches on the site for recent product or niche related posts and use these to your advantage too. For example, if you see that someone is looking to purchase the exact product that you are selling on eBay, you can use the @replies tool to send that person a message. Your message will say something along the lines of ‘I have this product available on eBay, please feel free to take a look at my listings’ and then you include a link to your eBay shop or listings. This way, although you are directly asking someone to buy, it is done by way of a response to a tweet and this is totally acceptable.

Remember that even if that person doesn’t buy from you now, it’s pretty likely that they will start to follow you as they are now aware that you exist. So, if nothing else, you gain an extra follower which is good news.

This is the great thing about Twitter. You can actually place a link to send interested people directly to a specific eBay listing even if it’s only got a few days left to run. This is because your ‘tweet’ appears instantly and so your followers and other Twitter members will find it straight away. The search engines will also find your tweet because it’s fresh new content and Twitter has a high page ranking.

Be patient

When you are using Twitter as part of your eBay business plan, you will need to give it a little time to work. It’s not going to happen overnight because Twitter results take a little while to build up and it should always be a long-term strategy of yours. You will definitely need to make building up your followers a priority and ensure that you are willing to tweet regularly.

If you start to use Twitter to advertise your eBay products you must follow it through because there is nothing worse than sporadic posts on a Twitter account. Especially for those followers who are really, genuinely interested in your products and what you have got to share with them. You’ll end up losing those followers and have to start from scratch so you should ensure that your Twitter marketing efforts are always strong.

If you have never used Twitter before, no problem! Just go to the Twitter homepage at www.twitter.com and create an account. I would recommend using your business or eBay user ID as your Twitter name for consistency. Once you have created your profile and uploaded an avatar, you are ready to begin. Try it – you’ll see the results for yourself! 

As always I wish you the very best of success, 

Amanda 

P.S If you haven’t got your name on my Priority Members List for Ultimate Product Sourcing Secrets yet you’re missing out on some free videos and important information. Sign-up here 

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I produce this newsletter on the understanding that these are my own personal opinions and experiences, which are as accurate as possible at the time of publication. I cannot be held responsible for any error in details, accuracy or judgment whatsoever. 

© Amanda O’Brien 2010 

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